


lay me (gently) in the cold dark earth

by ineffability (partlycharlie)



Series: (it's a) wasteland, baby [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Chronic Pain, Creation, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Crowley has chronic pain, Fallen Angels, Gen, Hurt Crowley, Hurt No Comfort, Pain, Raphael!Crowley, Wings, author has chronic pain, how is THAT the tag, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 02:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19347904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partlycharlie/pseuds/ineffability
Summary: They don’t talk about it much, Aziraphale and Crowley.They don’t talk about a lot of things, but mostly they don’t talk about what it was like, before… Everything.





	lay me (gently) in the cold dark earth

**Author's Note:**

> ! hope you enjoy !
> 
> warnings for angst this is not a fun fic be warned.
> 
> edit [7.8.19]: HI JSHFBIADUONIPMKSJBIHD IM ??? sorry. uh. thanks for 200 kudos!!!??????!!?!?!??! :)

They don’t - well. 

They don’t talk about it much, Aziraphale and Crowley.

About a lot of things - the 18th century, and that time where they ate oysters together, and that other time where Crowley saved Aziraphale’s books from a bomb and Aziraphale looked at him with that _smile_ in his eyes, almost as if… 

Not important, and to be honest, entirely besides the point.

They don’t talk about a lot of things, but mostly they don’t talk about what it was like, before… Everything.

Before the First War, and before the creation of Good and Not-So-Good (bad, evil, however you’d like to name it), before Adam and Eve and Eden and all the rest of it.

Aziraphale doesn’t talk about it because he wasn’t there for it. Aziraphale, brilliant angel that he is, was created precisely to protect Adam and Eve and Eden and all the rest of it.

Guardian of the Eastern Gate, indeed.

Crowley, though.

(Raphael, though.)

Crowley was there for everything.

He remembers - Creation.

She bent down, so close to him, and whispered - _Create the most beautiful things you can imagine, my child_ and so he did - the stars, and the planets, and nebulae and galaxies and universes, all of it, with his brethren, and he was Good before there Good.

And she crouched down to him, and said - _Heal, my child_ \- and so he did, created salves and blessings and balms, and he healed, and he was an Angel before there were Angels.[1]

And She cradled his hands in hers, though he couldn’t see them, and together they formed Earth, mountains and valleys and deserts, and his tears of joy formed rivers and oceans, and their smoothing hands formed plains, and - and -

There was Peace, for a time, though he couldn’t recognize it as such.

He remembers - War.[2]

Fighting Uriel, and Gabriel, and Sandalphon, and knowing Hurt before Lucifer had made a word for it, and Falling.

Nobody ever talks about it[3]\- but Falling hurts.

Oh, God, does it hurt. 

His wings failed him for the first time in his Existence. Contrary to popular (angelic) belief, they didn’t just change color when he Fell. 

(That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? That wouldn’t be enough, would it?)

They were torn off of him, primaries and secondaries ripped off with a force he had never felt before[4], his very being shaken and twisted into something unholy in its very being.

He remembers - landing.

Crashing, more like. Slamming against the ground, flat on his back, feeling bones crunch and an odd sort of weariness he didn’t have the words for, yet.[5]

Almost more than anything else, he remembers other Fallen ( _demons,_ She told him, her voice fading away until he couldn’t even remember what it sounded like), pointing at him like he was a circus attraction, yelling at him to get up and then spitting on him when he tried, stepping on his wings, laughing when they crunched and walking away on two legs he didn’t know how to create.

It was so - different, down here, wherever _here_ was. So - dark, and heavy. The air rattled through lungs he didn’t quite have yet, weighing down on shoulders that hadn’t fully formed, whooshing through broken wing bones that ached every time he moved.

And so he existed, for a time indeterminant[6], categorized by stabbing pains and burning aches echoing through a body that was only sometimes there. 

[7]

Eventually, He roared, loud and mighty, _GO UP. ANGER THEM. CAUSE PAIN, AND SUFFERING, AND AGONY,_ and so Crawly (oh, how that name made him shudder) grew to the size of a serpent and slithered up to the surface of 

Earth. 

This one, he created. He knew - he _remembered_ \- that.

This one was made by Her design, but he could see elements of his ideas all around him - deserts, and waterfalls and rivers and mountains - 

All of it, Hers.

Not his, anymore.

(This is not important, Crawly reminded himself. You didn’t fucking _like_ it up there, anyways - too stuffy and silent and _boring._ This is better.)[8]

He slithered over rocky mountains and ice-cold lakes, and he shivered and burned and ached and felt Pain, for the first time in his Existence.

(Almost as bad - he was lonely. Not that he’d ever say it to anyone, but - Lucifer below, he was lonely without Grace filling up his soul.)

He crawled across the very lands he had created, remembering smooth hands guiding his and tears falling from his cheeks, and he knew very suddenly that this, above all else, was Her punishment.

Her punishment was not the war, or the wings, or even the Fall.

Her punishment was the Pain.

* * *

[1] There were no Angels or Demons, before the First War and the subsequent Fall. There was no Good or Evil, either. There simply was. [^]

[2] He remembers when She made War, too. He remembers asking, _Why?_ and not getting an answer, and not thinking to worry. [^]

[3] This is an assumption. Crowley has never asked another demon whether it hurt for them to Fall; what if it didn’t? What if he was the only one to feel pain? The risks of telling somebody about a weakness like that far outweighed the possible benefits, and so he never truly knew whether Falling was supposed to hurt. [^]

[4] The force he was feeling was gravity. [^]

[5] Crowley, as he will be known, would later identify this feeling as fatigue. [^]

[6] Time, as humankind knows it now, did not exist. Time was created by mortal beings who needed, desperately, to know what place they held, however insignificant, among the rest of the universe they did not know existed yet. For Crowley, there was _Before_ and _After_ \- before and after What, exactly, he is the only one to know. [^]

[7] What all of this means, essentially, is that Raphael has known pain long before he knew how to describe it. For him, _Crowley - Crawly,_ as he was known for a time - is synonymous with pain. [^]

[8] He told this to himself so much that eventually it became the truth. [^]

**Author's Note:**

> raphael is known for healing in most abrahamic religions; dunno who came up with the stars bit but thank you.
> 
> credit also to the wonderful people before me who birthed chronic pain! crowley - i resonate with this idea so heavily; thank you for coming up with something i never could have dreamed of. it's not as evident here but it'll come up in later fics, probably.
> 
> thanks also to whoever i first saw do footnotes for Her interludes, because you are a literary genius. (if you’d like to know how it works, assuming it does work when you read this, then just drop a comment down below.)


End file.
